The year is 1913. The steamship SS Atlantica is two days out from port on its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Its unsuspecting passengers fully anticipated a calm journey to Boston, Massachusetts, with nothing out of the ordinary to look forward to. However, strange nightmares plague the minds of the people aboard the ship every night; rumours circulate of dark shapes following closely behind the ship just beneath the waves; and tensions rise when a body is discovered in the ship's chapel, signs of a strange ritual littered around the corpse. This voyage began like any other; but now it seems that the Atlantica may never reach its destination.
Fantasy Flight Games is thrilled to announce Unfathomable, a brand-new board game in the Arkham Horror Files universe!
Immerse yourself among the passengers and crew of the SS Atlantica in this game of hidden loyalties, intrigue and paranoia for three-to-six players. Some players are humans who are fighting for the survival of the ship, while others are traitors sent aboard the ship by mysterious beings to ensure that it never reaches port! Because player loyalties are hidden, determining who is friend and who is foe is critical to winning a thrilling game of Unfathomable.
Terrors from the Deep
Lurking within the depths of the Atlantic Ocean are a swarm of vicious, unspeakable horrors: the Deep Ones, led by Mother Hydra and Father Dagon. For reasons unknown, they have set their sights on the Atlantica and their minions, taking the form of human-Deep One hybrids, have infiltrated the steamship to help sink it from within. Each game of Unfathomable has one or more players assuming the role of one of these hybrids, and how well they can secretly sabotage the efforts of the other players might mean the difference between a successful voyage and a sunken ship.
If you're a human, you'll need to fend off Deep Ones, prevent the Atlantica from taking too much damage, and carefully manage the ship's four crucial resources if you want any hope of making it to Boston, all while trying to figure out which of your fellow players are friends and which are foes. Everyone shares the same resource pool but humans will try to preserve them while traitors will strive to subtly deplete them. Being able to tell when someone is purposefully draining the group's resources is harder than you think, especially when you take crises into account!
At the end of each player's turn, that player must draw a mythos card. Each of these cards represents a crisis that the whole group must try to resolve together. Some of these crises, such as Food Rationing, will call for a choice that could potentially put the ship's passengers or resources at risk, while others, such as Hull Leak, will call for a skill test in which failure could have disastrous consequences.
During a skill test, each player contributes skill cards from their hand to a face-down pile shared by the group. Once everyone has contributed (or chosen not to), the cards are shuffled and then revealed. If enough of the correct skills were contributed, then the group passes the test! But if the wrong skills were contributed, they can actually hinder the results, leading to failure. Thus, skill tests are dangerous opportunities for traitors to sabotage the humans' efforts, so you will have to stay on your toes at all times. We will unveil more about crises, skill tests, and more when we take a deeper dive into the gameplay of Unfathomable at a later date.
All-New Faces
While Unfathomable takes place in the Arkham Horror Files universe, it takes place many years before the events of the Arkham Horror board game and card game. Because of this, this game features a full cast of brand-new playable characters, each of which has never been seen in the Arkham universe before. We'll introduce you to each of them in time but, for today, please welcome the captain of the SS Atlantica: Keilani Tatupu.
A tough, experienced sailor and born survivor, Keilani has stood strong in the face of adversity before. When a typhoon killed the captain of her previous ship, Keilani was suddenly thrust into a leadership role and had to guide the rest of her crew to safety. Even once the storm had calmed, her challenges did not end, as mutinous crewmembers refused to follow her orders and set Keilani - and 11 others - adrift on a lifeboat in the middle of the stormy season. Despite these odds, Keilani kept her fellow castaways alive for four grueling weeks, and her story made international news when they finally reached land. However, there was one part of that story that didn't make the paper, one that she chose to keep to herself: her strange nighttime encounter with a hideous creature beneath the waves.
Did it let her live simply because she caught it by surprise? Or is it because she's secretly a hybrid in disguise, unbeknownst even to herself, waiting for the right moment to awaken to her true identity? Each of the game's 10 playable characters have similarly shrouded events in their pasts, which means no-one is above suspicion and every game of Unfathomable will bring about unexpected twists and turns.
Unfathomable Depths
As we stated before, we will have more to share with you about this phenomenal game in the future. For now, let us leave you with one more teaser: you may have noticed that the art style for Unfathomable is unique among the games in the Arkham Horror Files universe. Take a look at some of these gorgeous card backs and see if you can guess what they could possibly mean!
Are you a friend to humanity or a hybrid saboteur? Search for the answers when Unfathomable releases this September!